For Michele

We narrowed possible striped fabrics down to the two below. (The stripe in the earlier photos did not make the final two: the colors aren't quite right.)

So,

1) Which of the following stripes do you prefer? (Click for a larger view)

a) the narrower of the two stripes (a solid red on white)



b) the wider of the two stripes (a stripe with some mottling and color variation within the red)


Here is a close-up of the two stripes next to the red, for comparison

2) There are two possible fabrics we are considering for borders. In the second of the two quilt photos, you can see the starry fabric as the left border and the darker hand-dye below and on the bottom half of the right right. (If you want to see the pattern better, the starry fabric appears in the background of the close-up shot of the stripes above. The hand-dye is the fabric you see as the border of Caedmon's quilt, and in all of the quilt shots I have taken prior to today.)

Which do you prefer?

Kira's sense of beauty

"If you ever forget Finnegan, all you have to do is look at the picture"
-- Kira, on being complimented on her Finny artwork

I love her faith in the power of art. It's not just her own art, either. When she feels out of sorts, she asks Liam to play his violin for her using vibrato; and when he does, it genuinely makes her feel better. :)

Revised thoughts on aqua

I had two different aqua fabrics that I thought would work in the monkey quilt - one with swirls and one with vines.

The earlier photographs featured the swirly fabric. (It was the first one I cut, and I didn't want to complicate matters by making changes in the colors we weren't ready to play with yet!)

Initially I was planning to offer both as options, and then have Michele make the call between them. However, after handling both fabrics, I can feel that the vine fabric is of noticeably superior quality. For a wall hanging, the thickness of the fabric might not make a lot of difference, but in a baby quilt (or any other quilt that will get a lot of wear), I really want to use top quality materials.

Therefore, I would like to propose that we eliminate the swirly fabric from consideration, and go with the aqua vines instead.

Monkey business

Okay, first comparison:

1) In the following photos, you see two different options for the block in the top lefthand corner - a red striped fabric or a dark brown one.

Do you prefer:

a) A monkey quilt that includes a red striped fabric

b) A monkey quilt that includes a dark brown fabric


2) Do you like where I am going with it so far, based on the above images, or do you want to see more monkey squares?

I can do this by substituting monkeys for one of the existing blocks. So, if you would like to see more monkeys, which one other block would you like to have me remove? (ETA: You can see a few examples of this in the Comments)

Michele's decision will of course prevail in the end, but your feedback might help her make up her mind, so everyone should absolutely feel free to chime in!

100 good wishes necklace

I ran across this delicate little 100 good wishes necklace online, and had to get it for Sandie! Isn't it pretty? I thought I would include a link here for anyone else who is looking for a lovely little thing for a good wishes quilt partner, for someone adopting from China, or just for a friend. :)

More monkeys

My friend Michele has commissioned me to make a baby quilt for her nephew. (The baby shower is 31. May.) She fell in love with the look of Caedmon's quilt, and the aqua sock monkey fabric in particular, so I ordered some more monkey yardage online a few nights ago.

The tricky part last time was finding just the right shade of accompanying aqua blue to bring everything together. This is something I'll definitely need to audition in person, so I am making plans to go on a grand shop hop (hopefully this weekend - depends on when the fabric arrives) to find just the right thing to make the quilt work.

Hopefully I'll have some stories to share along the way.

Recycling

After going in to sign our tax forms on Saturday, we drove out to Worcester to a sewing/quilting expo. Several years back we had gone to something similar in Lowell, and had found a number of beautiful and unusual fabrics; so we thought this might be an opportunity to pick up some lovely additions for the kitty quilt.

It turned out that this event was more weighted towards sewing than quilting, so there wasn't a whole lot of quilting fabric, etc., we hadn't seen before. However, we did have a nice experience that I wanted to write about so I'll remember it.

We had decided to bring in one of of our Envirosax (the olive bag from the Retro series) to hold the fabric we were trying to match, and to carry whatever other fabric we might purchase along the way.

When we were paying the cashier for our admission tickets, she was very taken with this bag. I mentioned it was a reusable grocery sack, and it sounded like this was a new idea to her, so we talked about it a bit. As DH and I were walking away, I told him it was too bad we didn't have another bag to hold our junk because the woman had liked this one so much. Voilà - he pulled one of the other bags out of his pocket.

Now there's a sign if I've ever seen one. So I went back and told the cashier we wanted to give her the bag she had liked. She was so surprised and delighted (it was really cute!). She tried to press some money on me, and I tried to avoid taking it, but she eventually won out by telling me she was reimbursing my expo ticket price. ;)

I don't know how she will end up using it (e.g., as a grocery bag or not), but I am enjoying imagining that just maybe she might start a mini-trend for reusable grocery sacks in her circle.

"I luv yoo Finugin"

This was the message Kira wrote on the kitty drawing she sent me.

Impressive writing skills for such a little kid - but I admit I like the sentiment even better.

A little kindness means a lot

We went into the cancer clinic today to pick up the box with Finny's ashes.

There was one other patient there, a boxer dog named Lily whom we had met before. We waited to approach the desk til she and her owner had checked out. As an owner, you know that some of the treatments may be hard on your pet in the short term, but you do it because you believe that the measures you are taking will ultimately have a good chance of helping your pet get through his or her illness. You are relying on your sense of hope. The last thing you need is to see someone sobbing over a pet who didn't make it.

So we waited. And in the meantime, I brought out my deck of Pantone color swatches to get a better read on the paint colors in the lobby, because I am working on a wall hanging for them. I also took out 6 of the squares I had made to see which were the best matches, and to check if any might need to be set aside.

Lily doggie and her owner left. And we talked with the techs and the vet for a bit. We told them about the wall hanging, and also asked if there was some piece of equipment they needed that we could donate in Finny's honor.

Our vet said she'd confer with her colleagues, and reiterated how much they all had loved Finnegan. Then we kind of couldn't avoid the reason we had gone in any longer... so we picked up the little box and brought it home. NOT the way we wanted to be bringing my little boy home again. :(

When the mail came, I saw that we had an envelope from the cancer clinic. I wondered if there was a bill we hadn't resolved. Instead, it turned out to be a sympathy card from everyone at the clinic. They all had signed it, every one of them, and the ones who had worked personally with him had written sweet little notes.

I don't know if I have ever heard of a group of doctors doing this, not even for a human patient.

Finny was very important to us, but this small act of kindness made us feel like he had mattered to others as well. And that means more to me than I can say.